Optimizing Large Scale Content Sites

At the 2009 PubCon in Las Vegas, Mike McDonald talks with Ecordia’s Sean Jackson discusses some of the strategy and challenges involved with SEO for sites with massive amounts of content.

Ecordia had recently been working with PRNewswire, a site with over 5 million pages in the Google index.  Optimizing a site with that kind of content volume can certainly be a daunting task.

Sean talks about the importance of coming into the project very early in the process.  When dealing with sites that have this kind of volume the optimization project touches so many elements of the website.  You have to be in sync with teams developing the site’s architecture, you have to understand the processes in place for the content management systems and how various other web teams within the organization will be managing both the creation of new content and the management of existing content.

Sean described one of the most primary considerations being that of looking at the site in terms of logical compartmentalized chunks.  Sitemaps are limited to 50,000 URLs… so how do you handle a site with 5 million links?  The solution is simple enough in concept, but requires a good deal of forethought and planning.

Android’s Impact on Mobile Market

Site speed has been a hot topic ever since Matt Cutts indicated it would be a critical part of the Caffeine Update. According to Michael Martin of ResourceNation, it is just another move toward the evolving mobile market.

Numerous factors such as Flash can slow a site down, but Martin told WebProNews that those factors were, “… a micro millisecond difference, but that’s gonna be part of the factors of 2010.”

Incidentally, Android recently celebrated its second birthday. Although no Android device has yet to emerge as the “iPhone Killer,” there have been several Android devices released recently. Droid is probably the most popular and is already on Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. It is expected to be on AT&T around the first of the year as well.

Martin compares the Android/iPhone battle to the PC/MAC wars and says that it wasn’t very long ago that no one was familiar with Android, but now it’s everywhere. Where will Android go next?

Breaking Down What Search Is

According to Bruce Clay, the current concept of search is that a user has to know what he is looking for in order to type it into a search engine. Although the user might not know the specifics of what he is looking for, he has already made the decision to go to a search engine and find information. Clay, however, believes search should be an extension of marketing since most searches are a direct result from other forms of media.

Mike McDonald of WebProNews pointed out that this new view of search could raise problems for businesses. He said if businesses pay money for ads that prompt searches, they could be driving traffic to their competitors if they are not number one in the search engines.

To do it the right way, Clay suggests planning a strategy. First of all, decide what you want to promote. Secondly, optimize your website so that you are number one, at least with PPC. Thirdly, decide to dominate and succeed. Lastly, get a billboard with a catch phrase or write an article with a catch phrase in it. These steps will prompt people to search based on the action phrase.

As you do this, make sure that you have fully optimized. The last thing you want to do is not be number one after you have taken the time to promote a product. Clay says the SEO needs to be ready to respond to the promotion. He also issues a warning in regards to the media promotions: “If you don’t do the offline right, nobody knows to go search for you.”

In summary, think about how the user would search and tie it into an action phrase to brand with your business.

What are your thoughts regarding search as an extension of marketing?

Having More Success With Retweets

Retweeting can be a tricky subject; getting other people to repeat something isn’t at all the easiest thing to do. Dan Zarrella shared some valuable insights on retweets at PubCon, however, and these tips should help marketers spread their messages a little further.

In an interview with Mike McDonald, Zarella, who’s a social media and viral marketing scientist, started by giving retweets a strong endorsement. He called them his “favorite thing to talk about probably because they’re sort of this very elegant viral mechanism.”

As for Zarrella’s specific bits of advice, sometimes simplicity works best. Just asking for a retweet – try nothing more than “please retweet” – will generate results. Also, it’s a good idea not to get too chatty; Zarrella tries to keep messages he wants retweeted under 100 characters.

Then here are a few more ideas. First, links are perfectly acceptable in retweets. They’re quite common, even, appearing in around 60 or 70 percent of them. Next, Zarrella noted, “The words ‘new blog post’ tend to be retweeted a ton.”

Finally, in terms of timing, try to aim for a little later in the day (perhaps around 4 PM EST), and also later in the workweek (think Thursday and Friday).

In-House SEO Challenges

There seems to be rise in companies bringing their SEO in-house. Jessica Bowman, the Founder and President of SEOinhouse.com, credits much of this trend to the economy. On the plus side, in-house SEO can be very effective since SEO demands a lot of interaction with other people at a business.

The question many businesses face with bringing SEO in-house is: “Where does it fit in the business?” Much to the dismay of marketers, Bowman believes it fits better in the IT department.

An SEO that sits in IT will typically be willing to work with the marketing department. However, most IT departments are not usually as amiable to meet the marketing department’s technical requirements.

In-house SEO involves a tremendous amount of responsibility, especially with the advent of social media and local search. As a result, Bowman often recommends an in-house SEO work with an outside agency as well. An agency provides a senior level of authority that most in-house SEOs do not have. In cases such as this, the agency could act as a mentor and carry between 10-20 percent of the workload.

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